


Vigil

by enigmaticagentscully



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, I don't even know what awful place this fic came from so uh...sorry?, Season six speculation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-18
Updated: 2018-08-18
Packaged: 2019-06-29 04:52:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15722355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enigmaticagentscully/pseuds/enigmaticagentscully
Summary: "We need Abby.”“I’ll go get her,” said Clarke immediately. “I know where she is.”Bellamy sighed. “We all know where she is,” he said, and then, after a brief half second of hesitation: “Clarke...you have to talk to her.”Set early season six. Clarke helps Abby to move forward.





	Vigil

 

“How are they?” asked Clarke.

Bellamy leaned against the wall of the corridor as they paused to talk, apparently savouring the moment of rest, however brief. He looked exhausted, and Clarke wouldn’t have been surprised if he hadn’t actually had a chance to sit down all day.

Or maybe it was just being back in here again. Bellamy hated this ship, she knew, the metal lines and artificial light that reminded them all so much of the Ark. The new planet – though still unnamed and not exactly as welcoming as they had first hoped – felt like a haven compared to the ever present threat that the Eligius IV represented; a lifetime spent back in the cold emptiness of space.

Whatever this new world threw at them, anything was better than that.

“They’re stable,” said Bellamy. “For now. Jackson’s done the best he can but he’s already exhausted from the others and he’s running Medical almost single handed. We need Abby.”

“I’ll go get her,” said Clarke immediately. “I know where she is.”

Bellamy sighed. “We _all_ know where she is,” he said, and then, after a brief half second of hesitation: “Clarke...you have to talk to her.”

Clarke stiffened, but kept her voice light in case she had misunderstood the tone in Bellamy’s voice. “That’s what I’m going to do now,” she said.

“You know what I mean,” said Bellamy grimly, and he stopped leaning, standing up straight to face her properly. “Clarke, this can’t go on,” he said. “Not indefinitely.”

Clarke felt her heart sink. She had known for a while that this was coming, had been noticing more than ever the whispers and sideways looks when her mom made an appearance among them, had tried to ignore the growing worry at the back of her own mind.

And she had been _pushing_ it deliberately to the back of her mind, she realised. They all had so much to think about already, so much to do...it had been easier to just ignore the problem, hope it sorted itself out. Hope that just for once, she wouldn’t be the one to have to make the hard call.

“She just needs more time,” she pleaded, knowing even as she said it that if she couldn’t even convince herself then the chances of convincing Bellamy were slim to none.

“She’s had enough,” said Bellamy. “We all agree. It’s obvious that unless someone steps in, nothing is going to change.”

And that hurt, though Clarke did her best not to show it. _We all agree._ She could pretty much guess who ‘we all’ consisted of, but there had been a time when she would have been one of them, part of the discussion, not just informed of the decision made. She guessed it would take more than a hundred years asleep to change that back to the way it was. Bellamy didn’t even seem to think anything of it.

Maybe that was part of the reason she didn’t want to face her mom, if she was honest with herself. They were both, in some fundamental way cut off from the rest now, alone in a crowd. Clarke still had Madi, and Abby had...who did Abby have? Her own daughter. The only person left to look out for her, to see her as more than just a doctor whose skills they needed.

Bellamy didn’t push, apparently wanting to let his words sink in. And Clarke could see the sense in them, even if she didn’t want to. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t thought the same thing herself over the past few weeks and yet...and yet...

She looked up at Bellamy pleadingly, her throat suddenly constricted with emotion.

“I can’t do it,” she said. “She’s been through so much already. I can’t do that to her.”

“She’s doing it to _herself_ ,” said Bellamy, and then, apparently realising how harsh he must have sounded, softened his tone a little. “You’d be helping her,” he said. He reached out and laid a hand on her shoulder, an instinctively comforting gesture that meant more to her than he could know, and only made her feel more like crying. “Clarke, you know you’re the only person she’ll listen to. She needs you.”

Clarke shook her head miserably. “It’s not me she needs.”

 

* * *

 

 

Footsteps always echoed sharply in this place; that was another thing that irresistibly reminded everyone, Clarke included, of the Ark. She walked as slowly and carefully as she could, and yet her progress still seemed unbearably loud as she descended into the bowels of the Eligius IV.

If Bellamy hated this ship, she hated this room in particular. The cryo pods had saved their lives and ensured a future for the human race, but Clarke didn’t like seeing them anymore than she would have appreciated the sight of a scalpel that had been used in life saving surgery. The technology in this room was impressive, but she would have chosen a walk in the forest on the new planet with all its dangers above this place any day.

Clarke remembered when it had just been her and Bellamy awake, before they had decided with Jordan to rouse the others. It had felt undeniably creepy walking down this long room with all the pods occupied by hundreds of frozen people, the silent crowd of sleepers that gave the impression of watching even when she had known they couldn’t possibly really be aware of anything around them. But somehow it was even worse now – the empty pods had a disturbingly expectant look, as though beckoning them all back inside. After the chaotic business of her day to day life now, Clarke found the silence and the vast emptiness viscerally disturbing. It felt like a room full of ghosts.

Or perhaps just one.

Her mom was at the far end, sitting next to the first pod to have been occupied on their long voyage to their new home. The only pod that remained unopened. There was a kind of ledge in the wall next to the end of the row where Abby had taken up residence, and today she was reading from a datapad in her hand. There was an empty mug next to her, as if she had brought a drink with her and long since finished it. Or perhaps someone else had brought it down for her, though Clarke couldn’t imagine who would have had the time. It was a nice thought, anyway.

She approached warily. The silence as she had entered at least meant that her mom had not been talking to the pod’s unhearing occupant this time, as had become her frequent habit. Abby had learned to stop doing that when other people were around – although she herself was apparently not in the least ashamed of it, she could tell that it embarrassed others, made them uncomfortable.

In truth, it actually made Clarke just as uncomfortable to know that her mom felt she needed to stop as soon as she saw her. It made her feel like an intruder.

“Hey Mom.”

Abby looked up from her datapad and smiled. “Hey,” she said. She looked pale and tired, even more so than Bellamy had done, and she had only been sitting here all day. “It’s been a while. How’s the planet?”

“...complicated,” said Clarke. She didn’t want to derail the conversation by going into everything that had happened since the last time they had spoken, and she could tell that her mom was asking mostly out of form anyway. She didn’t really care about anything outside of this room, though perhaps it was a good sign that she at least cared enough to pretend. “We’ve run across a few more complications today, actually,” she said. “We need your help in Medical.”

“Of course,” said Abby, and laid down her pad immediately, making to rise from her seat. Clarke stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. The fact that her mom had chosen to leave the pad rather than take it meant that she was planning on returning the moment she was finished.

“It can wait for a little bit though,” Clarke said firmly, and sat down on the ledge next to her. “Mom...we need to talk about Kane.”

She felt Abby tense beside her, and thought bitterly back to twenty minutes ago, when Bellamy’s words had had exactly the same effect on her. It was, it seemed, an instinctive reaction in the Griffin women. Their automatic response to hearing unpleasant news was gearing up to fight it. She could almost see her mom’s walls slamming into place. Finding the right words for this would be important.

“Mom...” she said carefully. “You’re down here all the time. And I know you—”

“I won’t leave him,” said Abby bluntly.

It would have been better if her voice had been steely, as Clarke remembered it could be from those days a lifetime ago when they had used to fight about stupid teenage stuff. Instead she heard in that short sentence only weariness, a grim resolution without a trace of hope. It was not a declaration of war, just a statement of fact. It could not be argued with because there was no argument to be had. It was simply the truth – nothing more, nothing less. She would not leave his side.

So Clarke said the only thing she could.

“He’s dead, Mom.”

Her words hit Abby like a blow; Clarke could swear that her mom actually jerked back from her as though she had been slapped in the face. For a moment, words seemed to fail her altogether, and when she did finally speak her voice came out as little more than a reedy whisper.

“You can’t think...” she said. “You don’t know...”

“But you do.” Clarke took one of her mom’s hands in her own and squeezed in gently, but she kept her voice firm. “You’ve done everything you could. Everyone knows that if there was a way to save him, you would have found it.” Clarke turned to look at the frozen figure lying next to them, the silent third member of the conversation, his face almost entirely obscured by the ice that covered the clear panes of the cryo pod. She wouldn’t let herself turn away when she said these words.

“Kane is dead,” she repeated. “He’s not coming back. This isn’t a hospital bed you’re here every day waiting beside Mom, it’s a coffin. And keeping him like this isn’t fair to you or to him. You know it’s not what he would have wanted.”

She stopped to let the full weight of the words sink in; her mom had turned back to look at Kane too, and though Clarke couldn’t see the look on her face, she saw her whole body was trembling. It was a horrible thing to witness – she had expected a volley or arguments, of protestations, perhaps even a blazing row, but this horrified shock was so much worse.

Still, perhaps it was for the best. Perhaps she had finally gotten through.

“You have to let him go,” she said softly.

Her mom turned back to her, and the expression on her face was one Clarke hoped she would never have to see again.

“I can’t...” Tears spilled over from Abby’s eyes, and her voice was pleading, almost childish. “My whole life has been about making that kind of decision and I just _can’t_ do it anymore. You understand that, don’t you?”

Clarke couldn’t answer that in words, and it wasn’t really a question anyway; her mom knew better than anyone that she understood. They had both lost a great deal in the last few years of their lives, everything but each other really, and many of those losses had been willing sacrifices. A price that had needed to be paid, at the time. But where Clarke had found new reason to go on, her mom had simply been worn down bit by bit, as everything she cared about was stripped away from her.

Clarke remembered all too well what that felt like. To know that there was nothing left, and that the emptiness inside you was one of your own making. She couldn’t take that feeling away from her mom, but she could at least ease one part of the burden from her.

“I’m not asking you to decide anything,” she said, putting her arm gently around Abby’s shoulders. “You’ve done everything you can. All I want you to do is leave this place. Go and have something to eat, and get some real sleep. I can take care of everything else. Jackson knows what to do, and Indra wants to help too, to make sure everything is...is done right. All you need to do now is take care of yourself. Like Kane would have wanted. He doesn’t need you anymore, but we still do.” She swallowed hard and allowed a little of the emotion she felt to creep back into her voice. “ _I_ still do,” she said.

There was a long silence, and then:

“I know,” said Abby quietly. “I know you do. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

“It isn’t. You’re right, I’ve been selfish.”

Clarke gave her shoulders a gentle squeeze. “I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t have to.”

Abby stood up, slightly shakily, and Clarke followed suit. She watched her mother’s eyes drift to the cryo pod beside them. For a moment her hand reached out as though to touch the glass, but she didn’t allow herself the gesture, instead clenching her hands into balls at her sides. She seemed to have reached that blank, hollow place beyond grief, that place that Clarke was so horribly familiar with herself, and it made her ache to see it etched upon her mother’s face.

“I know you need time,” Clarke said. “I won’t let anyone rush you. We’ll have a funeral. A chance to say goodbye properly.”

Abby nodded. “The grounders always burned their dead,” she said abruptly. “We floated ours. Marcus—” Her voice caught on the word and Clarke wondered how long it was since she had said his name aloud. “Marcus wanted to be buried in the ground. He told me.”

“We can do that for him,” said Clarke gently. “He’ll be a part of our new world.”

Abby turned back to look at her. “He would have liked that.” She paused for a moment, her eyes searching Clarke’s face for something, or perhaps coming to a decision. “I want that too,” she said suddenly. “When the time comes. Will you promise me you’ll remember that?”

“I promise,” said Clarke, and now she could feel tears pricking at the back of her own eyes. She swallowed them back firmly. “But not yet, okay?” she said. “We still need you.”

“Not yet,” repeated Abby, as though learning the words by rote. They seemed to settle heavily on her shoulders; Clarke could almost see them weighing her down. Abby turned and started to walk away down the endless room of pods, her slow footsteps echoing on the floor. Just as Clarke moved to follow her, she stopped abruptly, a slight figure surrounded in the dim light by rows of empty glass and metal coffins.

“Do you think I’m being punished, Clarke?” she said quietly, without turning around.

Though the words fell on her ears in her mother’s voice, Clarke heard with a painful jolt of grief the echo of Madi asking her the same question...god, so many years ago now. It had been very soon after they had met, when they were still working out what they were to each other.

_Do you think I’m being punished, Clarke?_

_Why would you ask that?_

_Because I hid. Because I ran away from what I was. I was so scared of losing my family and then Praimfaya took them anyway. Do you think that was my punishment?_

_No! No of course not._

_Then why did it happen? Why did this happen to us?_

Clarke blinked away the memory, and saw that her mom still hadn’t turned to face her. She looked very small in the vastness of the room stretching out before her. Clarke tried to remember what she had said to Madi.

“No, Mom,” she said. “I think sometimes terrible things just happen. It doesn’t mean you deserve them. This isn’t your fault.”

The words sounded trite, insincere, what she would have told a child. Clarke glanced at the cryo pod beside her, unthinkingly, wishing there was someone, anyone else who could tell her the right words to say. The name on the screen and the steady readout of vital signs glowed in the dim light, mocking.

“Kane would have told you the same thing,” she added softly, knowing that much at least was true.

Abby still didn’t turn. She simply stood there, silent and still, for a long time.

“Yes, he would have,” she said finally. “I wouldn’t have believed him either.”

She left the room, and she didn’t look back.

 

* * *

 


End file.
